Some of the most popular varieties of tea we share with you, our wonderful customers, are chais. This Indian variety of tea is strong on the spices and has become a firm favourite worldwide due to its great taste and the benefits of including the spices in your day. Today we are sharing 4 great ways to brew up chai.

Please note – we love our Green Chai as much as you do, but to get the best flavour out of it, follow the modified instructions in the sections below! The unmodified instructions will work well for black tea chaos and rooibos chais,

First up –

1. Chai Tea

Grab your teapot (or mug and infuser), your tea and put the kettle on to boil. Place 1 teaspoon per 250ml of water in your infuser for your cup or pot and place it in the pot or cup (if using a teapot, give your teapot a rinse with hot/boiling water before adding your infuser). Pour over the hot water, and allow to brew for 5-7 minutes – a slightly longer brew allows the chai flavours to really come through in your finished cup. After your tea is brewed, remove the leaves and add milk and honey as required!

How easy is that!

For Green Chai: Follow the same steps for the black chai, but only use 80-85oC water to ensure the green tea remains fresh tasting, not bitter. We do not recommend adding milk to green tea, but honey would be a lovely addition.

Our Vanilla Chai – one of our black tea chais, perfect for making as a straight tea!

2. Chai Latte – on a stovetop

Lattes can be made with any of our chais, except green chai (which doesn’t suit milk).

Gather your tea, milk of choice (cow’s milk, soy, nut milk or coconut!) a pot for the stove, as well as your serving pot or mug and a tea strainer. Pour the required amount of milk into the stove pot and add in the chai tea. Bring to the boil, then reduce to simmer for 10-15 minutes. The chai and tea will need longer than the standard brewing time to allow the flavour to come through the milk, so this is a grew time to practice some patience! To keep you busy, if you’re serving in a pot you can give your pot a hot/boiling water rinse while waiting. When your chai is done, pour into your cup or pot through a strainer, and serve!

And for the fancier home-brew option:

3. Chai Latte – with steamed milk

For those lucky enough to have a coffee maker or individual steam wand at home, you can create cafe-style chais very easily!

Gather your pot for brewing the tea, tea strainer, milk of choice, chai tea and steaming device. Place the required amount of tea straight in the pot, then steam your milk in the milk jug. Pour the hot milk over the tea leaves in the pot, saving the foam for serving. Leave the chai for 10-15 minutes to brew to allow the flavours to come through the milk. To serve, pour through a strainer into a tall glass, top with the foam and a sprinkle of cinnamon or chocolate powder. Yummo!

4. Iced Chai

What?! A savoury iced tea?! What’s the crazy lady thinking!

I know, that’s what I first thought when I heard of the idea of icing chai, but it definitely works! Its also the best way to continue enjoying your chais in the heat of Australian summers. Best of all, using our rooibos chais means you’re getting a nice hit of hydration at the same time! Perfection in a cup!

Iced chai can be done with any type of chai tea, but our Rooibos Chai or Rooibos Vanilla Chai will give you a refreshing brew.

Grab a tall glass and fill with ice. Pop it in the fridge until the tea is brewed. In a cup/mug, put twice the usual amount of tea in your infuser and add in the hot water (80-85oC for green tea, boiling for black chai, rooibos chai or straight spices). For the tea, if you have a large mug you usually use and would put 1-1.5 teaspoons of tea in your infuser, this time add 3). If you like a bit of honey in your chai, add it in now to allow it to dissolve in the hot water. Leave the tea to brew for 7-8 minutes. While your tea is brewing, grab you glass of ice from the fridge. Discard your infused leaves when the tea is brewed, then pour directly over the ice. Add a splash of milk into your chai if you want and enjoy!

You’ll want to give this one a go, it completely transformed my views on iced tea!

We want to hear from you – share your chai creations with us in the comments or over on Facebook!

We have a very exciting collaboration to share with you today. We’ve been working with Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary to develop 3 new teas to team up with our Tassie Devil Tea to be part of our brand new Wildlife Range! While you’re already familiar with our Tassie Devil Tea, read on to become acquainted with our new blends:

This blend is made with child-friendly rooibos and foods that sugar gliders love to eat – apples, sultanas and other fruits. Perfect for our younger customers and those on the go. This blend is delicious hot or cold, and naturally caffeine free.

A unique treat, much like spotting a wombat in the wild! This is a medium bodied black tea with Tasmanian dark chocolate cubes (just like wombat poo!).

The most exciting thing about this collaboration is the Chari-tea component. From the sale of each of these teas, 50c will be donated to the Bonorong Wildlife Hospital, which will be helping heal the sick and injured native animals of Tasmania. This hospital is a unique creation of Greg Irons, Managing Director of Bonorong – nothing like it exists in Australia! Bonorong will not only be assisting wildlife in a way they haven’t been able to be previously, but having a permanent hospital site means they can be involved in other projects, such as assisting in research for the Devil facial tumor which is decimating the population.

Best of all, this allows you, our customers, to support this fantastic organization just by drinking some delicious teas (and eating square chocolate “wombat poo”). The teas will be available for purchase through our website, at Salamanca market, and of course from Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary. We hope to have many of our other wholesale customers also wanting to support the Wildlife Hospital by selling these teas at their café, restaurant or providore.

Hey there tea fans! Who has had a relaxing Christmas break? Or maybe its been jam-packed – with socialising, some festive drinks, and one too many slices of cake. My gut knows how you feel! So today, I’m going to run you through a few teas that can help refresh and revitalise your insides after some well-earned indulgence. All of our herbals below have one benefit in common – caffeine free hydration, which will bode well for anyone who has eaten too much Christmas ham in our warmer climate in Australia. This is even more so for Rooibos, which I’ll also talk a little about too – perfect for natural hydrating! Let me know in the comments below if you have tried any of these and which is your favourite after a big night out or satisfying meal.

Oh, yeah, the one you’ve all been waiting for – how to make iced tea at home!

If you’ve seen iced tea in the shops, and had a look at the ingredients, you’ll notice that actual tea is pretty far down the list. Which for a tea-nerd like me, just doesn’t cut it. If I’m after iced tea, I want there to be tea in that. And pretty much nothing else. So home made it is!

There are two main methods for icing your tea, which I’m going to show you today in this post, and one more I made up myself! I’ll also talk you through the best things to do with your tea, and additions you can make to it to have a super tasty chilled tea, or to make it beautifully presentable for your silly season party. I promise by the end of this post you’ll think its so easy you won’t know why you didn’t try it before!

Howdy all! Did you enjoy our first post? Today, we’re back with perhaps the most well known of the tea varieties (certainly in Australia!) – Black tea.

As we discovered in our last post, black tea is one of the varieties from the camellia sinensis plant. It is perhaps the most well known of the tea plant varieties, being grown and imbibed in the UK, Europe, North America, Australasia, India, China, Sri Lanka and Africa (this list is certainly not exhaustive!). The making of your morning cup of black tea isn’t as simple as just picking the leaves, though, there’s a few key steps to making the brew we all know and love. [Read more…]

Hey there, tea fan! Today we’re launching our new blog, where we’ll be discussing all things ‘The Art of Tea” – you’ll find out some more about our signature blends, the best way to get a perfect cup every time, the best gadgets for tea brewing, as well as meeting the hard-working team behind your favourite tea company!